Emma Gonzalez remembers her classmates in a gut-wrenching, powerful speech.

Kayla Stewart
03.24.18

We knew Emma Gonzalez was amazing. But at the March for Our Lives rally, the teenager rewrote the script on powerful activism.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

At the start of her powerful, gut-wrenching speech on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C., Gonzalez stood in front of the massive crowd, tears streaming down her face, absolutely silent for 6 minutes and 20 seconds. The reason?  

That's how long it took a 19-year-old gunman to go on a killing spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 students and staff.  

"In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone, absolutely every one in the Douglas community was forever altered," Gonzalez explained.

She went on to discuss the pain of going through such a traumatic experience.

"For us, long, tearful, chaotic hours in the scorching afternoon sun were spent not knowing," Gonzalez said. "No one understood the extent of what had happened. No one could believe that there were bodies in that building waiting to be identified for over a day. No one knew that the people who had gone missing had stopped breathing long before any of us had even known that a code red had been called. No one could comprehend the devastating aftermath or how far this would reach or where this would go."

And then, just in case those listening hadn't gotten her point yet, Gonzalez stated, "For those who still can’t comprehend, because they refuse to, I’ll tell you where it went: right into the ground, six feet deep.”

Gonzalez continued her speech by talking about the everyday things her fallen classmates would never be able to do, such as calling their friends, playing basketball, or walking to school with a sibling.

She wrapped up with a devastating description of the shooter's actions and a call to action for the audience.    

"Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job," she asserted.

Let's fight alongside her and others to make change happen, too.

Read more on the March for Our Lives with stories on D.C. student Zion Kelly’s speech on losing his twin to gun violence, outstanding protest signs, photos from around the country, and moving words from little kids.

And if you want to support the anti-gun-violence movement, we have a quiz for the best way you can help.

mass shootings gun violence school shootings washington, d.c. gun reform march for our lives emma gonzalez
More

Font made out of gerrymandered congressional districts shows how effed up our system is

UglyGerry.com

Gerrymandering is a funny word, isn't it? Did you know that it's actually a mashup of the name "Gerry" and the word "salamander"? Apparently, in 1812, Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry had a new voting district drawn that seemed to favor his party. On a map, the district looked like a salamander, and a Boston paper published it with the title The GerryMander.

That tidbit of absurdity seems rather tame compared to an entire alphabet made from redrawn voting districts a century later, and yet here we are. God bless America.

Keep Reading Show less
gerrymandering partisan politics political parties politics
Democracy

A mom couldn't stand her teenage son teasing poor kids so she came up with the perfect punishment

via Cierra Brittany Forney / Facebook

Children in middle school can be super shallow when it comes to fashion. To be part of the in-crowd, you have to wear the right shoes, brand-name clothing, and listen to the right music.

The sad thing is that kids that age can be so creative, but they forced into conformity by their peers.

Sadly, some people never escape this developmental phase and spend their entire lives wasting their money on material goods and judging those who do not or can not.

Keep Reading Show less
teenagers clothing name brands goodwill parenting stories moms fashion entitled teen punished
Family

Jennifer Nettles' CMA dress called attention to the fact female country artists don't get 'equal play'

Wikipedia

Women in country music are fighting to be heard. Literally. A study found that between 2000 and 2018, the amount of country songs on the radio by women had fallen by 66%. In 2018, just 11.3% of country songs on the radio were by women. The statistics don't exist in a vacuum. There are misogynistic attitudes behind them. Anyone remember the time radio consultant Keith Hill compared country radio stations to a salad, saying male artists are the lettuce and women are "the tomatoes of our salad"...? Air play of female country artists fell from 19% of songs on the radio to 10.4% of songs on the radio in the three years after he said that.

Not everyone thinks that women are tomatoes. This year's CMA Awards celebrated women, and Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles saw the opportunity to bring awareness to this issue and "inspire conversation about country music's need to play more women artists on radio and play listings," as Nettles put it on her Instagram. She did it in a uniquely feminine way – by making a fashion statement that also made a statement-statement.

Keep Reading Show less
popular

A blind man in a Facebook group asked people to describe their dogs and it's the sweetest post ever

via Dogspotting Society / Facebook

Over the past few years, Facebook has been a lightning rod for controversy, whether it's the 2016 Russia election hacking scandal, privacy concerns or numerous disputes over what it censors and what it does not.

So it's easy to forget that the world's largest social network is also a place where beautiful things still happen on a daily basis.

A blind man named Stephen William Dale Shkuratoff asked members of the The Dogspotting Society public Facebook group to describe pictures of their dogs so that he can get a better idea of what they look like.

Keep Reading Show less
popular